Video: Police Search for Suspect in Theft of Car with Baby Inside

A still from surveillance footage of the suspect in a Bronx car theft.

New York Police Department officials on Wednesday released video footage of a man suspected of stealing a vehicle that was briefly left running with a 7-month-old baby in the backseat – setting off a frantic search before the SUV was found abandoned about an hour later.

In the surveillance footage, the heavy-set suspect, wearing a striped hoodie and a baseball cap, appears to be pacing nervously in the street. A law enforcement official said the images were captured outside a parking garage in upper Manhattan, about a block away from where the unidentified man ditched the stolen Jeep Grand Cherokee at about 7:40 pm on Tuesday.

Police said the man tried to park the vehicle at the garage about 10 minutes after he stole it.

The official said the alleged auto thief apparently called 911 three times from pay phones to alert police to the vehicle’s location.

All of the calls came from the within the Washington Heights neighborhood, about 3 ½ miles from where the Jeep was originally stolen in the Bronx at about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, the official said.

The 911 caller told police the SUV was located at the corner of Goble Place and Jerome Avenue in the Morris Heights section of the Bronx, about two miles from the scene of the crime.

The baby, a 7-month old girl named Ayanna Julbe, was found inside and was taken to a local hospital, where she was determined to be in good health and unharmed.

According to the official, the episode was touched off when the girl’s parents left the vehicle double parked and running while they perused cell phone cases inside a Boost Mobile shop on East Kingsbridge Road.

The 27-year-old father entered the store first then motioned his 26-year-old girlfriend, Ayanna’s mother, to come into the store to look at a phone case, the official said. The mother was in the shop for only a moment and when she exited, she saw the SUV driving off, the official said.

She chased the vehicle before losing sight of it as it drove westbound in the area of University Avenue.

The mother called 911, which began a large scale canvassing of the area by the NYPD.